Groop

A long gestating album from L.A. staples Groop sees light this year. Following a 3-year residency at Zebulon, the band has been honing this one live as improvisations that take shape on stage. Once caught to tape and tamped down in the magnetic mesh, the band and studio snake Mark Rains chop and choose the best pieces for what appears on The Space Is The Place. The band, featuring members of Hooveriii, Frankie and the Witch Fingers (ex), Agriculture, and Total Heat, take the time-worn jam-centric model and turn their ears towards the cosmic collapse. Funneling the fumes left orbiting by Hawkwind, Ash Ra Tempel, and Popul Vuh, the collective curve their works through the German Progressive legacy.

The band siphon from the still of Space Ritual, dip into the delirium of Ummagumma and push forth the prog agenda in 2024. There are quite a few who find the free ripple of jam these days, but Groop are doing it with a bit more bile and bone in their teeth. Darkness and desire from the backbone of these sets, building to euphoric peaks that break like fever sweat and tumble back to the earth in contorted arrangements. The band and Rains turn the tumult of many nights under the lights into a seamless vision of entropy and ache.

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